Amazom.com plans to launch online shopping services in South Africa and four other countries by early 2023.
The five markets that Amazon will expand to over the next year are South Africa, Nigeria, Belgium, Chile and Colombia.
South Africans will also reportedly get access to Amazon’s Prime membership programme soon after the launch of Amazon online shopping in the country.
Amazon has long had a presence in South Africa through its cloud services business, Amazon Web Services.

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Afropolitan, a startup that wants to build a digital nation for Africans, has raised pre-seed funding of $2.1 million, according to its co-founder, Eche Emole.
Afropolitan started out as an organisation that organised parties, events, and festivals for the African diaspora.
The former CTO of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan conceives a network state as a digital nation built without the historical constraints of a physical nation, and that presents citizens with a fresh stab at societal and financial freedom.

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Ghana-based fintech Fido is now in search of additional growth avenues for its expansion across Africa.
Fido says that it is planning to add savings and payment products to its portfolio later this year, and to enter Uganda, its second market, as it prepares to expand to more regions across the continent.
The fintech is also set to open its second research and development centre in Ghana’s capital, Accra, which will augment its Israel branch, to help it automate most of its operations to ensure sustainability in the long term.
Fido CEO, Alon Eitan says small entrepreneurs don’t really have access to traditional banking systems.
Eitan says the payments product will be layered on top of existing payment rails, as we want to create interoperability between all the different payment rails that are popping up in different countries.

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Diagnostics is at the centre of healthcare; without it, doctors and physicians cannot offer treatment. But in emerging markets like Africa, where infrastructure is lacking and the doctor-to-patient ratio stands at staggering regular checkups are often considered an afterthought.
Healthtracka, Lagos-based health tech has raised $1.5 million in seed funding.
Dare-Johnson worked several years in the healthcare space before starting Healthtracka.
Dare-Johnson says while millions of Africans are guilty of personal health miscalculations, other factors contribute to irregular checkups such as waiting times and slow doctor consultations when present in a hospital.
Telemedicine usage in Africa has skyrocketed since the pandemic as it addresses some of these challenges discouraging patients from making routine checkups.

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Germany’s competition regulator is looking into possible abuses related to how Google operates its Maps product.
Andreas Mundt, president of the FCO, says they have information to suggest that Google may be restricting the combination of its own map services with third-party map services, for example when it comes to embedding Google Maps location data, the search function or Google Street View into maps not provided by Google.
The FCO added that it will be interviewing customers and competitors of the Google Maps Platform as part of the investigation.

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Platform9 announced that it closed a $26 million funding round led by Celesta Capital with participation from Cota Capital, NGP Capital and other investors.
CEO Bhaskar Gorti says that the new cash will be used to drive Platform9’s go-to-market strategy and product research and development, particularly as the company seeks out larger-scale enterprise deployments.
A recent McKinsey report suggests that fewer than 25% of cloud initiatives meet their time-to-market and cost goals.

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Binance.US, the American company associated with the world’s largest crypto exchange, isn’t worried about the market turmoil that has pushed some of its competitors to tighten their belts.
CEO Brian Shroder says that the company is in the strongest position possible to not only successfully weather this downturn but also emerge as the leading crypto platform in the U.S.
He says their funding round could not have come at a better time and they now have over $250 million in the bank.
The exchange is growing faster than ever and hiring across 80+ positions and Shroder fully expects its product/tech team to double this year.

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The construction industry in Kenya is so big that it is among the few globally that expanded amidst the Covid lockdowns of 2020.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics projected the construction industry will grow at an average rate of 6.1% over the next three years.
Jumba, a b2b construction technology platform launched in April this year, is out to bridge this gap through an online platform that allows operators of hardware stores, which are found on almost every block, to seamlessly restock.
Jumba CEO Kagure Wamunyu, says they have started to expand their products according to regional demands and the needs of hardware stores.
The idea is to make Jumba the source of all construction materials in Kenya and, when we eventually grow, beyond its borders.

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On-demand grocery retail business Appetito, announced the acquisition of Lamma, a similar startup which operates in Rabat, and the Greater Tunis area of Morocco and Tunisia respectively.
Co-founder Shehab Mokhtar, says the deal is expected to close by the third quarter of 2022, but the two companies have reached an agreement to operate under Appetito as a single entity.
Lamma co-founder and CEO Yassir El Ismaili El Idrissi say both companies have already begun to train staff together.
Mokhtar says that his company expects to soon close an 8-figure round to support the expansion.

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Kenya’s 12th parliament passed the controversial 2020 proposal that seeks to regulate anyone who employs technologies to collect, process, store or transfer information for a fee.
The wide-sweeping and vague ICT Practitioners Bill mandated the registration and licensing of vaguely defined ICT practitioners by a council.
Cabinet Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Computer Technology, Joseph Mucheru rejected it, noting that proposals in the bill would affect innovative talent and alienate local youth from lucrative online jobs, and educational and investment opportunities.
Mucheru had said,If enacted, the ICT Protection Bill 2016 will cause duplication in regulation and frustrate individual talents from realising their potential.

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